[SystemSafety] Candidates for the firing squad

[Olwen Morgan]

In the early 1990s, I was working on a project that was dedicated to 
improving software engineering practices. One of my jobs was to help 
with roll-out of static checking tools for C and C++. After setting a 
team up with a tool, I would check back in a week or 10 days to see how 
they were getting on with it.

One group for which I had installed QAC++ said that the tool didn't seem 
to be telling them much. It turned out that they were well disciplined 
coders who wrote little for the tool to flag up for them.

Another group said that they had stopped using QAC after one week 
because, "It complained too much about what they wrote." (Shortly 
thereafter, a substantial weight of bricks was dropped on them from a 
great height.)

*
*Now the questions:*Why do software engineers object to tools that show 
them errors in their code? What kind of mindset grips them?
*
it's yet another bizarre phenomenon that makes me think that improving 
software engineering needs a hefty input from cognitive psychology - in 
fact I'd almost go so far as to say that dilapidations of this kind 
might be best dealt with by cognitive behavioural therapy.


... and just a make-weight:

Back in the 1970s I was programming in COBOL for a London local 
authority. It was all batch-mode applications on an ICL System 4/50. 
Usually I got the data vets to do because I was at the time the only 
programmer on the site who knew anything about syntax analysis. Once one 
of my data vets crashed on its first operational run. A certain action 
needed to be performed twice at a certain point in the program. I had 
made a note of it but simply forgot and put the action in only once.  
After the program had crashed, I found the fault and corrected it in 
about half an hour, whereafter the program ran without further problems.

Later that day I went down to the ops staff to apologise for the error 
that had caused the crash. By afternoon I found that I had become a 
laughing stock among the programmers, not for making the error but for 
apologising for it.

*... WTF? ....


*Now that my lithium is kicking in (seriously, I do have to take it), 
the manic postings will subside.*
*


O



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